Texaco Supertanker Loaded With Iranian Oil Hits Mine : Cargo Leak, None Hurt, Owner Says

An American-operated supertanker loaded with Iranian oil hit a mine today just outside the Persian Gulf, and three reflagged Kuwaiti ships were reported moving slowly toward home under U.S. Navy escort.

Iran, which has said the gulf will be “full of mines” until the superpowers quit intervening in the region, declared today that it will turn the waterway into a “killing field for the aggressors.”

The 247,347-ton Texaco Caribbean loaded a full cargo of oil at Iran’s Larak Island terminal, according to Lloyd’s Shipping Intelligence in London. The tanker had passed out of the gulf through the Strait of Hormuz and was approaching an anchorage in the Gulf of Oman when it hit the mine.

Shipping sources and Texaco said that the supertanker was holed about a yard below the water line and some oil was leaking but that no one was injured.

‘Taking It Slow and Easy’

They speculated that the mine had drifted down from the strait, where Iran completed four days of naval maneuvers code-named “Martyrdom” on Friday.

Pentagon sources in Washington said the three Kuwaiti tankers and Navy escorts were moving north--”taking it slow and easy,” as one put it. The convoy had anchored overnight off Saudi Arabia, about 200 miles from Kuwait.

But Brent Sadler, a reporter for the British television network ITN, said in a telephone report from a chartered boat that the U.S.-Kuwaiti convoy had not moved. He said that the tankers’ lights were visible but that the U.S. warships were blacked out.

The Texaco Caribbean struck the mine about eight miles northeast of Fujairah, a port in the United Arab Emirates, and about 30 miles south of the Hormuz entrance. It anchored off Fujairah afterward.

Norwegian Charter

It is owned by Lexington Tankships Ltd., a subsidiary of Texaco Panama Inc. At Texaco’s headquarters in White Plains, N.Y., spokeswoman Anita Larsen would not confirm that the cargo was Iranian oil.

The company said the tanker is under a “single-voyage” charter to the Norwegian shipping and trading company Seateam and “under orders to proceed to northwestern Europe with a cargo belonging to that company.”

This was the first known mining incident in the busy Gulf of Oman tanker anchorage, a resupply and staging area for ships entering and leaving the gulf. The U.S. Navy uses it as an assembly point for convoys of Kuwaiti tankers sailing under the American flag.

Sources at Fujairah said the Texaco Caribbean left Larak early in the morning and was maneuvering to anchor when the explosion occurred.

Tehran radio said Iran’s naval maneuvers last week proved its “total readiness” to turn the gulf into a “killing field for the aggressors.”

It said Iran could arm naval units with “shore-to-sea and surface-to-air missiles, all of which are ready to be put into operation.”

On Sunday, Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi said: “The Persian Gulf will remain full of mines and continue to be a dangerous region for ships.”

The U.S.-Kuwaiti convoy’s overnight stop appeared to fit a Navy decision to make the most hazardous parts of the 550-mile voyage in daylight.